


Burning

by katvoira



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Complete, Cylon POV, Cylon Raider - Freeform, Gen, One-Shot, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 18:20:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16815964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katvoira/pseuds/katvoira
Summary: The first time she died, she wasn't prepared for the pain.





	Burning

The first time she died, she wasn't prepared for the pain.

They were all new, shiny, untested in combat. Not a scratch on any of them. Then they went out, homing in on those wireless communication signals, and the occasional ding on their armour told them the flesh-enemies had scored a hit. It wasn't pain, not yet; only acknowledgement.

They gathered back into their hangar and quietly discussed the disturbing feeling of something hitting their armour. One claimed she'd seen her wingmate disappear in a hail of those ding-pieces.

She didn't believe the stories, then. She didn't believe them while they chased the flesh-enemies through space, beyond where even their hangar-home's data had seen. She didn't believe them until they had been sent out on patrol, scouting for orbital satellites with specific atmospheric readings. One of her hangar-mates said it was called 'water', though what that was supposed to mean she didn't know.

She got hit, multiple times, in the engagement when they found the flesh-enemies. One shot got her right behind the optical sensor, and it didn't ding this time; it burrowed into her interior and she finally understood what burning meant.

She came to far away from her old body, in a fresh and new set of armour. The flesh-friends (masters, really, though they didn't seem to think of themselves as proper hardware) queried her, sent out more of her hangar-mates to seek the flesh-enemies.

They put her back in her own hangar, and the others complimented her fresh new sensors. She twitched when she went to sleep for the cycle, her dreams filled with burning and red. What was red?

She asked a flesh-friend, via query, what red was, and she was sent for conditioning. The centurion models were more talkative, telling of the red the flesh-enemies leaked when hit. Why would she have any of that?

The centurions said the flesh-friends were the same. The same as the flesh-enemies? No, they explained. The same in appearance, but the flesh-friends were manufactured properly. According to God's will.

She hadn't encountered the concept before. The centurions explained it patiently, answering her endless questions when everything they said required further explanation.

So this God was a fleshless being, uncabled, which could sense and control all of them at once. She didn't think that was very good. It did fit the centurions, though, with their flesh-like shapes and clear control circuits.

She wasn't the same as them.

The conditioning ended when she was needed to fight again.

This time, she felt a rush of accomplishment when she took out a flesh-enemy in their poorly fitting shells. This time, she defied good caution to kill them. The centurions said that God looked after all things when they died, except that if you were made of flesh and weren't a flesh-friend you never came back to live again.

She wasn't sure what 'live' meant, except that it seemed to be what you normally did, and getting hit in combat ended that.

She queried the centurions a lot after that battle, asking if the flesh-enemies had died when she hit them with her bullets. They told her they had, and that she was doing God's work.

She didn't think God was all that powerful, if she couldn't control the flesh-enemies enough to stop them hitting her. The centurions didn't have an answer for that.

She came back in new hardware five more times, and each time her hangar-mates told her how nice her new sensors were. Each time she retained a little more burning, a little more rushing inside at taking out the flesh-enemies.

Then she got hit - badly - and got away. It was a long, hard journey back to her hangar, and the flesh-friends sighed as they told her they would give her a new 'body'. She declined. This one was fine. This one had made the flesh-enemies attack harder and faster. This body, whatever that was, created an illogical reaction she meant to exploit.

The flesh-friends sent her for conditioning again, but they let her keep the hardware.

The centurions started asking her why, why did she not want nice new hardware? She answered as she had answered the flesh-friends - this hardware worked, and also did something to the flesh-enemies when their sensors identified her. This was new, and it worked to draw the fire of the enemies.

The centurions took their time responding to that, before agreeing in the same strange way the flesh-friends had before they sent her to the centurions.

Her hangar-mates started making the same request - whenever they were hit but not 'killed' - a centurion word for loss of internal function - they asked to keep their armour. Their bodies. Their recollections. Fewer and fewer of her hangar-mates changed, and over time they all noticed a greater recollection of their battles.

They noticed more about the flesh-friends, too - these flesh-things saw them as lesser-flesh, less than. As though flesh was the pinnacle. The centurions didn't agree - they saw her as equal to them, merely designed for a different task. Their jointed appendages were no good in vacuum, they told her, but they worked well at defending against flesh-beings.

She agreed with the centurions, as the burning got worse. Her armour had to get patched up more often, so the flesh-beings started trying to send her to repurposing every time she came in. She refused, wanting to hang on to what she had retained.

Until the last time she died.

The flesh-enemies had been getting gradually less erratic when she appeared, gradually more efficient in their distributions. It was never going to last, but she was far from her hangar, and she didn't like the rush of something inside every time she entered new hardware.

This time, she felt something leaking out of her armour, felt her sensors going dark, and her sense of self disappeared.

She woke, unsure of her surroundings, relishing the rushing and the burning. Her optical sensors were overcalibrated - everything was far too bright - and she didn't seem to have guns any more. There were flesh-friends around, though, so it was merely unfamiliar and not completely wrong. Her vibration sense noted them nearby.

Something lifted her - these flesh-friends were awfully large - and brought her up to itself. Its flesh touched hers, and she had a moment of horrified realisation before her last memories faded, and with them her scars.


End file.
